The essence of this post is really if people find that it's going too fast or too slow gaining levels.
That in itself is a deadlocked discussion, since it differs a ton from each person. I have seen people pull off a level 40 character in settings where XP was scarce in a month or less, while some will walk around with their character in a setting flooding with XP and still be level 10 or less by the end of the same month.
I do, personally, agree with Archer though. Since as far as I have seen in previous cases, letting the XP up in such a way triggers a kind of race between some players (and some are too many in this case
) where they simply sprint through levels and compare against the speed of the others, technically a competition. Others just wanna be able to compete with the big "old" guns and thus get up to level 40 to stand a better chance. So for all it's good intent, I think that it's an idea that bites its own tail.
Anyway, to comment on the other points of Nex's:
There are a lot of different DMs, and as Power stated, there are multiple reasons why they have been distracted from the game. That leaves a large pressure on the ones remaining, since they are to fill up the "hole" left by the ones taking a break for whatever reason.
However, I can somewhat agree to the quest-"issue", since I have noticed that quests tend to be epic in most cases, and thus require a lot of time for preparation.
I find, without complaining, that I miss the less epic quests.
Such as go and find a missing merchant that got attacked by orcs.
Go fetch some stuff for some guy.
Or someone telling the old lore to the new guys, a NPC or some such. (Archer already did some of that.)
etc.
But again, quests are just the same as levels, some want epic quests and epic rewards, others just want something more modest.